Israel Shamir: Fear Not

So many people have sent and forwarded so many warnings of the forthcoming US-Israeli attack on Iran that it is hard to ignore them. A piece written by a few ex-spooks warning of a new round of war is one of these messages. In our view, spooks, ex or not, are not the most reliable people, and the CIA is not the best reference. However, this item fits with the dire predictions of Fidel Castro. It fits with the recent heating up of the Gaza and Lebanon borders. It fits with the relocation of some American warships and accompanying Israeli U-boats to the shores of Iran. Rumours of Israeli advance forces being placed in Azerbaijan and even Saudi Arabia are used as supportive evidence. The Jewish state certainly wants to break Iran, just as Iraq was broken.

On the other hand, we have heard the cry “wolf” so many times from so many people that now we are perfectly blasé. For quite a few years, hardly a month has gone by without a serious warning of an attack on Iran.

Though these warnings usually are sounded by friends, they do serve the enemy as well. They amount to psychological pressure on Iran. For this reason alone I am ready to bet: there will be no attack on Iran. Israel has never gone to war without its centre-left parties in the government. So as long as Israeli government includes only right and far-right parties, no war is foreseeable. It would be like driving without insurance. (Ehud Barak’s Labour Party is too weak to count. If Tsipi Livni should join the government – run for cover. But not until then.)

I am amazed by the strong nerves of President Ahmadinejad: a weaker person on his place might flinch and pre-empt the imminent attack. He does not – apparently he thinks that the jaw-jaw is not likely to become war-war. This is also the view of the well-informed Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram: The current escalation of US and Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran is probably no more than that, writes Amani Maged Many observers have correctly remarked that an attack on Iran is likely to become a full-fledged disaster for all parties involved, or even lead to nuclear world war. One does not feel that either Obama or Netanyahu has the guts to step recklessly into the abyss.

In Israel there is a hidden fear that should Israel attack Iran, the US president will not rush in to save it and defend it. Obama certainly did not promise he would; and he has no knee-jerk instinct to defend Tel Aviv come what may.

Israelis are notorious for their “kiss and tell” indiscretion (“larutz lesaper lehevre”, in Hebrew). A confidante of Netanyahu, Ari Shavit, has told us that “the Israeli leader applied hidden pressure to the American leader,” which made him fall on his knees and beg for mercy. The name of the “hidden pressure” is a Jewish billionaire from Chicago Lester Crown, who “made Obama” and supposedly retains full control over his creature, or alternatively, another Jewish Chicagoan Marty Nesbitt. However, even if the US President was forced by his Jewish benefactors to do a volte-face, he certainly bore a grudge for this humiliating turn.

The worst-case scenario as seen from Israel unrolls as follows: Netanyahu mistakes the vague remarks of Obama for an iron-clad promise and launches an attack. Then Obama sits tight while Israel bleeds under the Iranian response. Israelis remember that this was the US tactic for dealing with Saddam Hussein: this best friend of America and recipient of US military aid was led to believe that Washington would permit the takeover of Kuwait.

The most likely interpretation for the sabre-rattling is that Israelis plan yet another invasion of Lebanon, while hoping that Iran will be scared into immobility by the threat of an all-out war. Like all previous invasions of Lebanon, that would be a great crime and a huge mistake, but hardly an apocalyptic event.

Indeed for all appearances it is a re-run of 2006, when the predictions of American attack on Iran were also running high, but eventually Bush has got cold feet and the Israeli army was roundly defeated in the mountain valleys of South Lebanon.

If It Comes

However, if this optimistic prognosis goes the way of some weather broadcasts, and instead of a sunny day with rainy spells we get a full blown storm, the whole fabric of the Middle East will unravel. This juggernaut would be unstoppable. After Iran, Syria would fall. After Syria, Saudi Arabia. It will be the classic domino game: Iran rejoiced when Iraq fell. Saudis wish Iran to fall. Israel wants all of them to fall. This is inscribed in their Clean Break paper and its source, Oded Yinon’s paper, which they follow religiously.

If Saudis have too poor of a memory, let us remind them: A few months after 9/11, Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec briefed Richard Perle’s Defence Policy Board, calling upon the US to break up Saudi Arabia. Its oil fields should be targeted and its financial assets seized, advised this neocon. Back then, I wrote in an essay appropriately called Take your Money and Run

“The riches of the Arabian Peninsula hoodwink the Jews, being tantalisingly within the reach of IDF Merkaba tanks. They have too many good reasons to undo Saudi Arabia.

– Saudis have too much money, too much oil and too few friends.

– Elimination of all Saudi financial assets will invigorate the flabby Dow Jones average and strengthen the weakened dollar.

– This prosperous and well-armed country must be reduced before Israel takes its most important step, the seizure and destruction of the beautiful Umayyad Mosques in Jerusalem.”

With the destruction of Iran, the countdown for the takeover of Saudi Arabia would begin. In words of a neocon: “Everyone wants to take out Tehran. But real mensch wants to take out ar-Riyadh”. Provided that no attack on Iran is possible without Saudi connivance, the “irony of history” will be complete. The enemies of Israel will be taken out one after another, each with help of the next, still unsuspecting victim.

Give them war

However small the chances for all-out war, we should not sit by, wail and wait for the enemy to act. But fear of war is not the best adviser. If they want war, give them war. Attack the chief warmonger, and we know who that is. Name him ‘the Lobby’ with Mearsheimer, or the ‘Zionist Power Configuration’ with Petras, or ‘Masters of Discourse’ or whatever. They are calling the shots, let them foot the bill. “This is not a case of the Tail wagging the Dog,” quipped Anatole Lieven, “but of the Tail wagging the unfortunate Dog around the room and banging its head against the ceiling”.

What is the secret of its success? It is alchemy, of sorts. Not in vain did the Jews stand at the cradle of alchemy. However, the alchemists of old tried to transmute base metals into gold. The modern alchemists of the Lobby transmute the real gold of your labour into Fools Gold and pay others with it. Instead of bubbling retorts and overflowing alembics, they use shares, bonds, loans, mortgages, derivatives and other instruments by which Goldman-Sachs and Madoff and hundreds of other banksters rob you of your livelihood. This alchemy is nothing more than counterfeiting.

Deal with them, and you will save yourselves. As a bonus, you’ll save the world, too. It is them, not the Iranians or Iraqis, you Americans should fight. The great American, Eugene Debs has said: “If you are given weapons, do not use them against far-away strangers. Turn them against your true enemy at home. Expropriate the expropriators, rob the robbers.”

Alchemical Wedding

Problem is, the Lobby leads both the Left and the Right towards the one goal – his goal. Miraculously the Alchemist weds the most reactionary forces to the most enlightened liberals in a mock-alchemical marriage. The real thing is a mystical union of King and Queen, of intellect and soul. The Lobby’s version is a Fools wedding.

Their King is the Lobby’s new ally: the Tea-Party mob of pseudo-right Republicans with an admixture of European fascists like Geert Wilders. These men and women, united by their hatred of Obama, have recently sworn obedience to Israel and supported an attack on Iran.

Instead of the feminine soulful element, the wonderful alchemists of the Lobby liberally add gay and feminist activists to the mainstream pseudo-left media. Not the Queen, but a Drag Queen.

The feminist element in the Lobby-blessed union is anything but soulful. Remember, the attack on Afghanistan was preceded by a verbal barrage from the feminist Left, as I wrote at the time. It is repeated now. Here are three most recent headlines on Iran from the Guardian, the best paper of the moderate Left:

It is a replay of the treatment they gave to the Soviet communism. When Reagan wished to bomb Moscow, the pseudo-leftists had condemned the Soviets for their lack of democracy and treatment of dissidents. What a wonderful division of labour: the false Right calls to kill the gooks, the false Left justifies the killing.

Why this obsession with gay activists and adulterers? This is not due to compassion. They are chosen and protected because, by the brazenness of their actions, they mock the sanctity of marriage in general, and ultimately that of archetypical sacred marriage, of the union of Heaven and Earth in order to undermine the sacral fabric of the world and to render it defenceless.

In the name of profanity they go to fight the pious puritans of Persia and the warrior monks of Lebanon. The Masters could overlook Iranian nuclear reactors, it is their belief in God they can’t tolerate.

Israel Shamir: A leading Russian Israeli writer, is a champion of the “One Man, One Vote, One State” solution seeking to unite Palestine & Israel in one democratic state. Shamir’s work and that of his contributors speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians seeking an end to the bloodshed, true democracy and lasting peace.His comments about current affairs and their deeper meaning are published on his site www.israelshamir.ne